Hello everyone! Cheers to another day of Inktober. Today I want to share a drawing I did of a famous vegetable called petai.
The prompt for Inktober Day 8 is 'Stinky'
Petai is also known as stink beans in English. But in my country, Malaysia, it is commonly known as petai. It's a vegetable that is highly nutritious and has many health benefits. It can be cooked with chilli and sambal or it can be eaten raw as an ulam which is a traditional vegetable salad.
The only issue is that it has a strong pungent smell that some people find it a little unpleasant. It's due to the sulphur content in it. I am one of them and often times I can't stand the strong smell. No matter how well cooked it is, I can't bring myself to enjoy the meal with it. My mother used to cook it but gradually stopped as my brother and I both didn't eat it much. However, I think for every person who don't like it, there will be ten people who love it.
So that's what I drew today. It is not stinky in a gross way, but it is called stink beans which is why I decided to sketch it.
The Process
I drew the full raw petai first. This is how they look like when they have been harvested. They can actually be even longer in real but I'm keeping it simple for the drawing. Generally they look like long greens with little pods of beans inside. We need to cut them open to get the beans.
I also drew the beans in a wooden bowl after being removed from the pods. They can be eaten raw just like that or cooked first. If you are going to eat them raw, then check them well to make sure there are no caterpillars or bugs first. Just like any other vegetables and even fruits, sometimes these little crawlers can show up to surprise us.
I also drew three little beans separately. Then I added some touch ups by darkening the outlines more. I wanted to give a definite shape to the petai. As for the beans in the bowl, I added some depth by further darkening each individual beans. That was time consuming but I like how it turned out. I also used very gentle pressure to add some shadows to everything. My pen was making a weird scaping sound due to the light pressure. This is the final outcome and I called the artwork done.
Thank you for dropping by and I hope that you like this little kitty. Have a wonderful day ahead!